When I first hit the doors of AA, it was not a stretch to admit that my life had become unmanageable. I was a divorced 30-year-old part-time mother who had just moved back home and was living in the basement. I say “part-time mother” because my two children lived with their father 9 months of the year. I worked the 12-steps like they told me and found a certain peace within myself and a renewed love of God. But I continued to settle for less than good relationships.

FAMILY WARFARE

My own childhood was a picture-perfect family–of the alcoholic kind, that is. My memories were that of More

“Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, films, and TV.”

My recent search on the Internet for the words “12-step program” got 633 million hits (in .16 seconds, by the way)! Whoa. Bill W. and Dr. Bob would be blown away with that fact, huh?

Both the AA and Al-Anon 11th Tradition speaks of maintaining anonymity “at the level of press, radio and television“. We’ve come to add the Internet into that mix, too. In fact, both organizations (they are separate, if you didn’t know it) have guidelines in place for those who want to take the Program on to the Web. I am the “webmaster” (for lack of a better word) of my Al-Anon home group’s membership website. And there are many, many other groups that have made the leap.

So that brings up the question: are websites “promoting” the Program instead of “attracting”, like the 11thTradition states? More